


nothing red can stay

by jkerblood



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Love/Hate, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Not A Fix-It, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unhappy Ending, Vomiting, enemies to lovers but they don't get together, feral akechi rights, follows vanilla p5/no p5r spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-01-30 22:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21435895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jkerblood/pseuds/jkerblood
Summary: It was easy, Goro supposed, to fall in love with Akira. Wanting to be was infinitely harder.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 7
Kudos: 139





	nothing red can stay

**Author's Note:**

> (CW in tags)

Goro is five when his mother dies.

He finds the body. Black script, usually covered, shines starkly on her bloodless neck. It’s penned out in a gentle manner, graceful even. To him, it looks like a noose.

“Masayoshi Shido,” it reads, burning into the inside of his eyelids.

He shouts, calling for her as if she were merely sleeping, as if he could rip away death’s wretched grasp with hysterical tears. Adults usher him away, looking sickly and nervous.

Gossip spreads among the crowd, echoing whispers of his mother’s supposed infidelity, being single, being alone. He wants to yell at them that she wasn’t alone, that she had him, but he no longer has her and it makes him sick.

He decides, then, that he hates soulmates.

* * *

Akira is five when he finds out his parents don’t love each other.

He sits in his room, ear pressing against the door to eavesdrop on a hush, heated conversation.

(Dinner had been clipped, the tension palpable. His mother drove her knife into the meat until it clattered against the plate. On her hand, his father’s name distorted with the strain of muscle, gilded words almost illegible.

She had gotten up abruptly after that, leaving without a word.

“Akira. Go to your room,” his father said. The dire, furious look on his face left no room for protest. He shivers at the thought of becoming like that, and swears he’ll never hurt the people he loved with that anger.

“But—” he objected, despite knowing it was futile.

_“Now!”_

Akira flinched and exited silently, glancing back once at the half-eaten meals laid out on the table.)

He catches snippets of conversation obviously not meant for him to hear. They talk about divorce and custody, lamenting their relationship. He crawls back into his bed and wishes he hadn’t listened.

He decides then that soulmates weren’t worth the pain.

* * *

Goro is fifteen when his soul mark manifests, writing itself into existence on the inside of his left wrist. The letters are metaverse-red, reflecting on the fractaling walls that seep into the edges of his costume.

He pukes into his hands halfway through a long ledger of indistinguishable hits, the nausea of his sordid actions forcing bile up his throat. He’s never been completely heartless, no matter how bad they were as people or how immoral their actions were. He can’t bear rip off more than one glove for fear of what lies under it.

The walk to back takes the last of his energy, stumbling into his apartment. There’s no physical pain, but his muscles ache with overuse that shakes his arms when he reaches for the lights.

“I’m home,” he says, and his only his own voice reverberates back to him.

He shuffles to the sink, staring at the tackiness between his fingers with disgust. Nails scratch at his wrist nonsensically, as if he could scrub away the name and hope it was no more than a slight oversight of humanity’s design. The mirror reflects someone all too familiar, despairing and animalistic.

He searches for a knife, mind too exhausted to realize that this was probably a bad idea. It strikes through the name on his skin, the pain unregistering as he buzzes with pleasure from the obfuscated mark. A comfortable red drips from his wrist, like lullabies hummed with warmth.

The next trip to the metaverse forces him to heal the wound, and watching his skin knit together was disgusting in itself. Watching the ink rise, unperturbed, over the fresh scar was worse. He screams with broken ardor, bloody and raw, until his bones start to ache under the pressure of his fingers. He’s a child once again, waiting for the comfort of a mother that would never come.

He wonders if he cut off the limb, would it come back? Would it etch itself into his very existence, like a blight for which no cure could be found?

He starts wearing gloves outside the metaverse.

* * *

Akira is fifteen when his soul mark manifests. It imposes itself on the inside of his right wrist, blood-red, as if it had carved itself into his skin.

His friends bring it up as soon as they catch a glimpse, congratulating him. Akira looks away and tugs down his long sleeves.

“Don’t you think it would be better if you could choose?” He asks, skin burning like a brand.

When he receives a scandalized look in response, Akira realizes he’s misstepped.

“Why do you have to be so weird?” His friend asks, scoffing. Akira has never been a permanent fixture into their clique; this was a good as a death sentence. They leave him with nothing but contempt for another ridiculous custom he had to abide by.

“Akechi Goro,” it says, and he vows to hate him, however irrational it may be.

He spends whatever money he has on extra strength concealer, and waits until he gets called in for a uniform violation before he switches to summer short sleeves.

* * *

Goro is seventeen when he identifies the person at the end of his soul mark. A black-haired boy sits on the screen of his computer, holding a placard with his name printed on it.

“Kurusu Akira,” it reads, matching the letters on his wrist to the last stroke. The tips of his nails press into his palms, spine going rigid.

“Pardon me, Sae-san,“ he says, interrupting her griping of whatever case she’d been assigned to. “I must attend to something.”

“What?” She responds, confusion lacing her expression. “It’s the middle of the day.”

“It’s quite urgent,” he assures with a tight smile, clenching his teeth to bite back the truth. He hopes she can’t see the tense, restrained trembling of his body. He shuts the lid of his laptop—not bothering to turn it off—and stands, all but running out of the building.

He walks out briskly, just to keep up appearances, ducking into the nearest out-of-the-way alley. A scene would paint too darkly onto his image, so he obscures himself between the buildings and opens the metaverse app. “Mementos,” Goro manages to choke out. He can’t see the change, but the atmosphere sinks into his mind and Loki becomes all the more loud, all the more hateful.

“Shut up!” The feeling of claws piercing through his skull and puncturing the brain underneath makes it through the turmoil of his thoughts. He’s gone completely insane, black bleeding into the pure princely white.

Every disgusting emotion floods his system at once, head tearing apart in the flurry. His breaths become more panicked and unregulated, taking in oxygen like a drowning man. The edges of his vision darken and he sways, catching himself against the wall with an arm.

“No. No!” He rips off his helmet with desperation, slamming and cracking it on the nearest wall. A red mask slips in its place, and it’s only marginally more tolerable.

A corner of his brain laughs at his pitifulness, mocking his own inability to control something as simple as breathing. Lack of control was definitely the beginning of the satire called his life. The inability to affect his own birth, he thinks, was the most egregious offense.

* * *

Akira is sixteen when he puts a face to his soulmate. He’s watching the TV idly, sitting at the counter with a book on his day off when he’s mentioned.

Sound cuts out as he stares at the visage that’s tormented him for the past year. The name on his wrist is mirrored on the screen, titled under the picture. He stops long enough for Morgana to notice, batting at his arm when his voice falls on deaf ears.

Then comes anger, burning desire to break free from the mark that sits on his wrist like a shackle. He seethes and Arsene stirs in his mind, detesting the inevitability he refuses to succumb to.

He’s unsettled, buzzing with energy that persists until Morgana forces him into bed. Akira is wide awake when he feels the Morgana’s breathing even out, his own breath catching in his throat when the cat shifts. Like a thief in the night, Akira sneaks off to the alleyway he and Ryuji met, phone in hand. The red eye stares back at him in silent judgment.

He enters the castle, the familiar clothing clinging to him like a second skin. It’s wrong, he knows, and he shouldn’t be here without his team. He can’t even rationalize it as worth the risk, because the dangers of dying alone far outweigh the gain of some power. He doesn’t know what he would say if they found out. Morgana would surely kill him if he knew.

Akira walks in anyways. It’s a fools’ venture; he knows nothing will change, but the ache in his heart demands attention.

He takes out shadows until he can’t move, summons up pixie to recover, and continues until he’s out of energy and items. When he can’t go on, he sneaks his way back to the entrance and comes out of the metaverse, spent. His wounds are half-healed and bruises splatter under his clothes. It’s too addicting, the thrill, the pain, the danger.

Dawn is on the horizon when he makes it back to Leblanc, the inside of his wrist burning. Graciously, he passes out as soon as he lays down and doesn’t wake for the rest of the night.

* * *

Goro is eighteen when he finally meets his soulmate.

It’s on some staged TV broadcast set that’s exactly like the others. By happenstance, he passes by the hallway where he and his friends are gathered. Goro’s measured expression almost falls with his stomach, but years of working with his father have prepared him to react pleasantly no matter his true feelings.

He makes polite conversation, shoving down the feeling in his chest. The talk is short and he barely remembers what he said afterward, only that neither of them had touched upon the elephant in the room. Kurusu hadn’t even reacted when he announced his name, so he extrapolates that one, he didn’t care, or two, was actively avoiding it. All the better for Goro, either way.

He excuses himself, despite them obviously not wanting him there in the first place, and throws up his lunch in the bathroom.

It’s the next day when he’s scheduled for a television appearance and prepared to drone on about the same trite morals he’s repeated for the past week. He’s mildly surprised when they deviate and get the opinion of a live crowd. Even more so when a familiar black-haired boy looks him in the eye and says, “They’re justice itself.” Goro stares back at him—Akira—defiantly. Two could play that game.

“You say that with such firmness,” he manages to get out. His words are mild, but his contempt oozes out a little too much in his voice.

Lies come quick, Robin Hood slipping into place and flaunted, his ‘false’ strong sense of justice on full display. The stage lights sizzle satisfyingly on his skin.

“Look at me!” He wants to scream, “You’re nothing!”

The show ends soon after, and Goro catches Kurusu alone. They swap perfectly cordial words, both of them unwilling to be the first to lose their unannounced game of chicken. He refuses to let an ounce of his irritation at Kurusu’s aloofness show.

From then on, it’s the same. Every conversation is filled with subtle jabs of hidden malice, untold truth, and subterfuge. It’s akin to a dance, or maybe a staged sword fight, with both of them trading blows and both sides unwilling to finish the other off for fear of ending it.

He finds it easy to fall into rhythm like that, mentally sparring with convoluted statements. He knows he’s really a phantom thief; Kurusu just stares back in a mute challenge.

Leblanc becomes a routine, more comforting than Goro’s own apartment. Visiting eats away the rest of his sparse spare time, but he can’t seem to regret it.

“We seem to share some kind of bond,” he says one day, gauging Kurusu’s reaction—in front of Sakura, no less.

“I agree,” is all he says, because he’s so _ above _ him. Goro’s fingers grip the porcelain tighter. He wants to choke him out until he admits it, wipe the insufferable blank look off his face. Instead, he chuckles softly to disguise his ire with a laugh.

They both toe the line until it’s difficult to tell when stinging comments became teasing became thinly veiled flirting. He doesn’t realize it until it’s too late. It’s when he welcomes Kurusu back, utterly domestic, and he responds with, “Honey, I’m home.” Then, Goro knows he’s screwed up.

The words go beyond their usual banter, and it shocks him, like he’s been traipsing on thin ice and has fallen into glacial waters. He stills for a split second, processing the meaning of his words and parsing through his thoughts for an adequate response.

“You’re back awfully late,” he says in lieu of an actual reply when he comes up empty—as if they were simply fated soulmates and not fated enemies.

It was easy, Goro supposed, to fall in love with Akira. Wanting to be was infinitely harder.

Goro’s feelings are ugly, like compulsion with permanence that sticks to the walls of his skull no matter how hard he tries to scrape it away. Every time he catches a glimpse he can’t help but wonder what it would be like to kiss Kurusu in a messy melee of tongue and teeth and anger and pain. The most sickening fact was that he couldn’t even deny it—Robin Hood is the very fabric of his existence and disowning it would collapse the life he’s built for himself.

He falls back on hatred, because it’s all he has ever known and all he’s ever strived for. Hatred and love toed the line as well, after all—and concealing his obsession with fury would be incredibly easy.

Goro vows to abhor him as he promised. He collects the things that he had admired and paints it over with red anger: Kurusu’s cool, assuaging composure. His dry humor. His strong ideals. His quiet contemplation. Clings to it like the last spider thread out of hell.

(He doesn’t realize that it’s what drags him down.)

Goro hides his anguish with blackmail, joins the Phantom Thieves, and finally, resplendently, kills the object of his torture. It hurts more than his own death.

* * *

Akira is seventeen when he meets Akechi.

He tries his hardest to look down on him, to detest him. He stares at him with contempt, watches him lie so easily it astounds even him. They’re too similar underneath it all; only deception can see through deception. It’s like Akechi is a mirror for every offensive part of himself.

He is conniving and sly and deceptive. Akira responds in kind, more easily than he should. There’s a part of him that expected it—they did supposedly share the same soul. But they’re opposite in circumstance, in personality, in behavior. Akechi liked the spotlight, Akira savored backstage. Akechi takes his coffee with cream and sugar, Akira drinks it black. Akechi pleases everyone and forges no strong bonds, Akira can count the people he trusts with his life on his fingers.

Akira finds him pitiable. Akechi would hate that.

The feeling wells up when he sees Akechi sitting at the bar of Leblanc, alone, despite it being a Friday evening. It’s worse when he realizes it’s not just pity—that it’s genuine longing and admiration.

Akira has always been observant, his mind tracking social cues with the precise calculation. Toes pointed away means they don’t want to talk to you, hands laced in front of them means you make them uneasy.

It’s that observation that gives Akechi his humanity. From the layered scar tissue on his wrist, to the way he shakes with rage at Akira's non-answers, he becomes more imperfect and substantial with every culpable action. Akira tries his best to view him without bias, but the tug of his soul mark sits heavy in his mind.

He spends the rest of his week taking out his anger on shadows. The team doesn’t question why he won’t switch out anymore.

Eventually, their subdued meetings come to an end. Akira is wholly unsurprised when Akechi comes to blackmail them. Even less so when suspicion is brought up about him. Akira is not disappointed when Akechi points a silenced pistol at his head and fires.

What he does feel is grief, when Akechi dies. Guilt hunts Akira down, running away with his thoughts and warding off any sleep that comes. He doesn’t know what happened to the corpse, doesn’t know if it stays, rotting into the floor until it disappears with the palace. But there’s no body for them to bury either way, so he prays at the shrine and offers condolences to his foster parents. All that’s left of Akechi is the regret that worms its way into Akira’s brain stem, and the ghost of his other half that feels achingly empty.

The cumulation of their relationship is evident in his personas, a promise grasping at his mind. The last blow on Shido is sealed with Uriel in a moment of ironic justice, but justice was never about preventing offenses—it was about punishing them after the fact. It’s bitter consolation for the lives he’s taken.

Akechi’s name disappears when they defeat Yaldabaoth, and his world shatters.

Maybe it's more accurate to say it shifts back into place, since he’s been looking at it through broken glass his whole life. Which draws another revelation—that it was never about the soul mark, that all his laments were his own. The ending is abrupt, as if there were more to be written, but life isn’t a novel and Akira has to stop his wistful thinking.

It’s a painful fate.

* * *

Akira is twenty when he chooses to get Akechi’s name tattooed on the inside of his wrist.

It’s in red and the sole proof too much love, because he never got to reconcile, never got to know him without hatred and vengeance. The name feels foreign once again, reborn with new meaning while keeping the old. Akira accepts it all and allows Akechi to live in his memories. He refuses to forget.

But he moves on, and keeps his past to a bitter cup of coffee left on Leblanc’s counter.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> ok this is an L but i want to get it out of my docs
> 
> as always feel free to hmu on [tumblr](jkerblood.tumblr.com)


End file.
